A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

and the semblance was gone, washed away in orange
glare.
    The smoke was making her eyes burn. She rubbed at them with the heels of her
scarred hands. When she looked up at the Mother again, it was her own mother
she saw. Lady Minisa Tully had died in childbed, trying to give Lord Hoster a
second son. The baby had perished with her, and afterward some of the life had
gone out

of Father.
She was always so calm,
Catelyn thought, remembering her
mother’s soft hands, her warm smile.
If she had lived, how different our
lives might have been.
She wondered what Lady Minisa would make of her
eldest daughter, kneeling here before her.
I have come so many thousands
of leagues, and for what? Who have I served? I have lost my daughters, Robb
does not want me, and Bran and Rickon must surely think me a cold and unnatural
mother. I was not even with Ned when he died . . .
    Her head swam, and the sept seemed to move around her. The shadows swayed and
shifted, furtive animals racing across the cracked white walls. Catelyn had not
eaten today. Perhaps that had been unwise. She told herself that there had been
no time, but the truth was that food had lost its savor in a world without Ned.
When they took his head off, they killed me too.
    Behind her the torch spit, and suddenly it seemed to her that it was her
sister’s face on the wall, though the eyes were harder than she recalled, not
Lysa’s eyes but Cersei’s.
Cersei is a mother too. No matter who fathered
those children, she felt them kick inside her, brought them forth with her pain
and blood, nursed them at her breast. If they are truly
Jaime’s . . .
    â€œDoes Cersei pray to you too, my lady?” Catelyn asked the Mother. She could
see the proud, cold, lovely features of the Lannister queen etched upon the
wall. The crack was still there; even Cersei could weep for her children.
“Each of the Seven embodies all of the Seven,” Septon Osmynd had told her
once. There was as much beauty in the Crone as in the Maiden, and the

Mother could be fiercer than the Warrior when her children were in danger.
Yes . . .
    She had seen enough of Robert Baratheon at Winterfell to know that the king did
not regard Joffrey with any great warmth. If the boy was truly Jaime’s seed,
Robert would have put him to death along with his mother, and few would have
condemned him.

Bastards were common enough, but incest was a monstrous sin to both old gods
and new, and the children of such wickedness were named abominations in sept
and godswood alike.

The dragon kings had wed brother to sister, but they were the blood of old
Valyria where such practices had been common, and like their dragons the
Targaryens answered to neither gods nor men.
    Ned must have known, and Lord Arryn before him. Small wonder that the queen had
killed them both.
Would I do any less for my own?
Catelyn clenched
her hands, feeling the tightness in her scarred fingers where the assassin’s
steel had cut to the bone as she fought to save her son. “Bran knows too,”
she whispered, lowering her head.
Gods be good, he must have seen
something, heard something, that was why they tried to kill him in his
bed.
    Lost and weary, Catelyn Stark gave herself over to her gods. She knelt before
the Smith, who fixed things that were broken, and asked that he give her sweet
Bran his protection. She went to the Maid and beseeched her to lend her courage
to Arya and Sansa, to guard them in their innocence. To the Father, she prayed
for justice, the strength to seek it and the wisdom to know it, and she asked
the Warrior to keep Robb strong and shield him in his battles. Lastly she
turned to the Crone, whose statues often

showed her with a lamp in one hand. “Guide me, wise lady,” she prayed. “Show
me the path I must walk, and do not let me stumble in the dark places that lie
ahead.”
    Finally there were footsteps behind her, and a noise at the door. “My lady,”
Ser Robar said gently, “pardon, but our time is at an end. We must be back
before the dawn breaks.”
    Catelyn rose stiffly. Her knees ached, and she would have given much for a
featherbed and a pillow just then. “Thank you, ser. I am ready.”
    They rode in silence through sparse woodland where the trees leaned drunkenly
away from the sea. The nervous whinny of horses and the clank of steel guided
them back to Renly’s